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Who to Blame? Columbine and the Century 16 Theatre Massacre

While our country has never been adverse to violence against other nations, expedient groups (Native Americans, union leaders, African Americans, etc.), or family members; mass murder and violence perpetrated by individuals was relatively rare in the USA. I believe this is due to a fundamental change in our culture. I call it the "Blame Game." When personal responsibility and social mobility dominated, failure led to suicide and domestic violence. "I blame myself." We now predominantly react as powerless victims crushed by societal elites. Where dispair once led to suicide, it now leads to acts against the faceless, unreachable authorities. "I blame them."
Last night in Aurora, Colorado, a single gunman opened fire at the Century 16 theatre showing the midnight premiere of the third Batman movie, wounding more than 50 people and killing (at last count) 14. Aurora is about 25 miles from Columbine where two students killed their classmates. In the theatre case, it appears the gunman intended to survive. This was not a case of suicide by cop. Instead of trying to explain these acts by psychoanalyzing the individual perpetrators, we need to start critiquing our society – where the powerful are so few and faceless that their victims resort to acting against one another and where infamy is the only way to be heard.

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“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” ― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.” – Simone de Beauvoir

“Naive as it may sound, inoculating society against the antisocial requires, at bottom, persuading people of what is palpably true: that society has value and everyone should contribute.” – Bruce Cannon Gibney, Author